Young people aren't naive and idealistic really, or at least not to the point people seem to be suggesting (which is ****ing smug anyway really since they're all students). If you ask someone who is in university about their politics, they probably have a firmer grasp on them and the reasoning for them than your equivalent 40 year old with kids, regardless of what wing they are on or anything else. I think naivety is part of but it's also down to being more enthusiastic when you're younger. When you're young you discover things for the first time, you slowly discover more about capitalism, distribution of wealth, geopolitical repercussions of concentration of wealth etc. and you're more interested in changing things because you're young and have spring in your step and all that. Then you get older and you have to get jobs and step firmly in line to keep them, find ways of making ends meet and so on. Before long you're not looking at the rat race from an objective perspective any more, you're just trying to keep up with it. Then you've got a family to support and keeping up with the system, getting tax breaks, keeping money in the pocket and such is more important than trying to change the system to you.